


i saw a ghost on the stairs

by seratonins



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, Ghosts, background jeongchaeng cause i can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seratonins/pseuds/seratonins
Summary: Dahyun had asked, "Where am I?""My house.""Oh," the other girl scratched her head. "Sorry about that."(Mina sees dead people. It's a whole thing.)
Relationships: Kim Dahyun/Myoui Mina
Comments: 9
Kudos: 222





	i saw a ghost on the stairs

Mina is not the sardonic type by any means, so when she was five and she told her mother she saw a wailing little girl dressed in an old Victorian nightgown named Sana on the top of the stairs of their new house, her mother had all but passed out.

Mina hadn't really been scared. If anything, the other girl looked more frightened than anyone, her sobs of anguish filling the entire room. So while her mother laid frozen in fear, little five-year-old Mina just tilted her head and asked, "What's wrong?"

"I can't find my mommy," the ghostly creature had croaked.

Of course, the logical course of action to take next was asking for the child's mother's name and forcing an incredibly upset single mother to drive Mina and her new little Victorian Era friend to the library to find out where she was buried, proceed to also force her poor mother to where her grave was, and then watch as the little girl placed her pale little hand on the stone where her name was written. In the cemetery, Sana had disappeared into the light.

That's when Mina had, essentially, found out she could see ghosts.

It wasn't all bad, really. Some ghosts were creepy - like the man with a hat that appeared when she was seven without eyeballs, wailing for his wife. Some were just sad, like the ghost of a lady who had died giving birth and wanted to know if her baby had made it. But there were also fun ghosts. When she was ten there was Jeongyeon, who had gotten her head cut off by a shark at some beach while vacationing in Australia (which she assured Mina she thought was a pretty cool way to die) and her 'unfinished business' was finding out if her girlfriend Chaeyoung had moved on, and Chaeyoung turned out to be really cool even if she had to talk to a ten-year-old about what was probably the most traumatic moment in her entire life.

But then. Then appeared Dahyun.

Mina met Dahyun on a rainy morning when she was thirteen before her mom had let her dye her hair red (which is ridiculous, by the way. Mina's seen dead people since she was a kid, she was definitely mature enough to dye her hair at thirteen). Dahyun was around Mina's age, she was blonde and she didn't look sad. She just looked confused, standing at the top of the stairs.

Mina smiled, gently. "Hello."

Dahyun had asked, "Where am I?"

"My house," she replied.

"Oh," the other girl scratched her head. "Sorry about that."

And then Dahyun had never left.

The other ghosts, they had stayed with her for just a few weeks, months at most when their unfinished business was a bit tricky. But Dahyun stayed, and then stayed some more, and then some more, until her presence became a constant in Mina's life. Where Mina went, Dahyun followed.

Not that Mina would complain. Dahyun was good company, especially in class. During presentations, Mina's belly would fill with butterflies and she'd find it hard to speak, so Dahyun would stand at the back of the class and pull funny faces to distract her and get some giggles out of her. When Mina had to study for an important test, Dahyun sat at the end of her bed, asking her to repeat the words over and over again, leaving not a single crease on the bed covers.

"I think I like you," Mina had decided.

They raced to school most days - and no, ghosts cannot fly, so it's pretty fair. Dahyun can pass through things though so she didn't have to dodge anything so that kind of sucked, but also Mina is alive so she couldn't really complain. It's like, alive privilege. Now Mina feels a bit too old to run to class.

On her second year with Dahyun, when Mina's already fifteen and they are out for ice cream, Mina passingly thinks about how sad she'd be if she couldn't have any ice cream anymore, so she stops in her tracks and frowns.

"What's wrong?"

She asks, "Why don't you tell me what you want so you can pass?"

Dahyun takes a second to answer, then shrugs. "I don't really know what I want."

And that had been the end of it.

When she turns sixteen Dahyun and her mom throw her a surprise birthday party. Her mom can't see her, but Mina gifted Dahyun a whiteboard so she could write in it, and communicate with others if she wants. Which is ridiculous, but, you know. It works, so who cares? Not that Dahyun uses it much - just when she really needs something and Mina can't do it for her for some reason. Dahyun asks for Mina's mom to buy her the new pair of shoes she really wanted, and when she opens the package she cries.

"Dahyun told me," her mom says, smiling. "Or wrote to me, or whatever."

When she goes to bed that night she turns to her before turning the lights off. "You listen."

She says it like it's the biggest thing in the world, like there's much this dead (now sixteen year old) girl can do roaming around as a ghost in their little town, like other people can actually see her. But still, it moves her. She's never had a friend before. Mina's a bit of an outcast really with all the, "I see dead people" and "my best friend is a ghost" thing that she has going on. It's baggage not many people want to carry, so she spends most of her days with Dahyun, since no one really ever wanted to spend time with her. No one that was alive, at least; But Dahyun doesn't ask her to find her dead baby, or to take her to see her dying father or to find out if her husband was really cheating on her while she was taking her last breath. Dahyun doesn't ask anything of her. She just listens.

Dahyun says, "Of course." Like listening to Mina is her favorite thing in the world.

At that moment, Mina wishes she could touch her. Hold her hand, kiss her cheek or something. It feels like the right moment to do so. But when she reaches for her hand she feels nothing.

Dahyun's not alive, but sometimes she feels like she is. When Mina dreams, she dreams she hugs her.  
  
  


Mina graduates High School with honors and doesn't go to prom. There's a cute girl in her maths class called Momo who asks her out but she politely says no. It's not that she's not nice - if there was anyone alive Mina'd ever call a friend, maybe it would've been Momo, but she can't bring herself to accept. Dahyun's face comes to mind when she thinks about Momo dancing with her hand placed in her lower back and it makes her feel sick, so she apologizes and declines.

Later Dahyun confronts her, "Why would you say no to Momo?"

"Why do you care?" Mina purses her lips in annoyance, lifting the covers of her bed to go to sleep. She doesn't know why the subject has become like a sore spot for her, like it's some kind of bruise. "You don't need to know everything, you know."

Dahyun looks hurt, and she tries to give her that nonchalant half-shrug that she does when she pretends she's not. "I just care about you."

Dahyun makes her less shy, more daring. At the same time, most of the time spent with her is in silence. She's private. She never talks about how she died or when. Mina doesn't mind - she likes the quiet, and there's no strangeness to it. Sometimes it feels... tender.

She's a strange ghost. She's never met one who had absolutely no clue what she truly wanted and needed to pass on, but Mina would be lying if she said she had tried to help her, all these years she's known her. The truth is Mina is selfish. She likes spending time with Dahyun, and she doesn't want to lose her. She doesn't tell her that though, because she'd be all smug about it, and sometimes it feels like it's more than what friends are supposed to tell each other.

Mina's annoyance waters down into regret, and she hangs her head low.

"I know," she says. "I'm sorry."

Dahyun nods, accepting the apology straight away because that's just how Dahyun is, and that's that for a while.

Then on graduation day, when her mom's cutting a coffee cake she bought for twenty bucks at the grocery shop, Dahyun asks once again, "Why did you turn Momo down?"

Mina didn't want to talk about it then, she doesn't want to talk about it now. She pretends she can't hear her and she spends the entire celebratory dinner basically avoiding her and pretending she cares about whatever her mom's blabbering on about.

Then when they are almost done eating and she's putting the plates on the sink, Dahyun clears her throat.

"I'm kind of glad you said no," she scratches the back of her head. It's a bit ridiculous. She's a ghost. She's pretty sure ghosts don't get itchy. "Is that... weird?"

 _I talk to dead people,_ Mina thinks. _Everything about this is weird._

She says, instead, as her belly fills with butterflies, "No." And goes back to doing the dishes, trying to drown her butterflies with some soap and water.

Dahyun nods. "Okay."

Mina doesn't say anything else. She wouldn't know what to say, anyway, since she barely understands what she feels herself. Dahyun leaves after that, probably bored of watching her scrub pots and pans, and that's when Mina finally feels like she can breathe again.

They do that a lot, leaving things unsaid, like the other can read their mind. It's a bad habit.  
  
  


They are both nineteen when Mina's mom falls ill. It takes all three of them (their little dysfunctional family) by surprise - Mina's mother had always been healthy if not a little frail some days.

The doctor says it's incurable, slowly eating away at her, but that they can control it because they found it early. Mina doesn't eat for three whole days, then decides not to go to college after all. She can take care of her mom's book shop while she recovers - she had wanted to study real state, but she doesn't mind staying at home. She had feared that if she moved away for college Dahyun might not have followed, so it's a weight off her shoulders, sort of.

But Dahyun is helpless for a couple of weeks, as if lost not knowing how to help Mina. She watches as she takes care of the shop, makes soup, writes her mom in the little whiteboard she got her (she bought yellow markers and Dahyun had been really happy about that for a while) messages like 'Good morning!'. Still, she's very clearly restless.

"I don't need you to do anything," Mina tells her during her twentieth birthday, when she's done blowing the candles and her mom excuses herself back to her bedroom.

Dahyun can't for the life of her stay still, so even when she speaks her hands are fidgetting behind her back. "I can't just do _nothing_."

"You're helping by being here," she replies, sighing.

"I'm dead," she says. "I'm not a lot of company."

Mina tenses at the reminder. She doesn't like to think about it much - in fact, she never thinks about it. Dahyun is as real as real gets.

"Stop," Mina says, sharply, and Dahyun shuts up for a few minutes, sensing the change of tone. Mina's mad. She rarely gets mad, so she lets her ride out the anger for a few minutes until the tightness on her chest fades into a strange sort of numbness. She turns around to face the sink. "Please. Just be with me."

She can't see her, but she knows Dahyun is nodding.

"Of course," her friend says.

Three months later, her mom's doctor tells her the illness was worse than they thought, and that chemotherapy won't really help anymore. Mina tries to make things work, but her mom gets sicker and sicker every day. One day, when she's so tired she can't eat and she has to hand feed chicken soup to her mother, she tells her, "I'm happy you have Dahyun."

Mina's mom dies two months later in her bed, and when the funeral is done Mina can't bring her legs to walk away from where her mom's buried, so she stays put until everyone leaves. She's not proud of the way her knees go weak and she falls down to the grass and she's not proud of the way her knees tint green and brown and she's not proud of much, these days. Dahyun is there, and she tries to wrap her pale arms around her, but she feels nothing and it makes everything so, so much worse.

There is no ghost at the top of her stairs the next day. Mina grows a bit bitter, and her heart hardens, tangled by thorns. Dahyun doesn't say much anymore, and Mina throws the whiteboard to the trash three weeks after her mom's funeral.

It's one of those years when you don't really see the light. Mina starts wondering if spending so much time around ghosts has finally turned her into one. She closes every window, turns off every light, and skips whatever meal she can afford to not pass out during work hours. There's a particularly hard day at the book shop that makes her throw a glass of water to the floor just to watch it shatter into a million pieces and it's all so terribly _meaningless._

"Mina..." Dahyun whispers, watching her try to pick up the pieces.  
  
"She won't haunt me," Mina says, simply. "Why won't she haunt me?"

"I'm not good at feelings." She says. Dahyun visibly swallows, then bends down to her level and tries to help her pick up the broken glass.

When they are done Mina's tired, so they go up to her bedroom, but Dahyun doesn't come in. Instead she stands at the frame of her door and smiles, sadly.

"Death is a tricky thing, isn't it?"

The comment settles in Mina's bones, digging through her skin. It makes Mina want to touch her. It makes Mina want to be touched. She goes to sleep and doesn't dream.

Things get better.

She's twenty-two now, and she shares the house with Dahyun, and days go by slowly, uneventful yet peaceful. She's not studying - she still takes care of the bookshop her mother loved so much and watches movies that Dahyun doesn't really understand, and Mina eats popcorn and knits and makes jewelry that she starts selling online and she opens the windows and light comes in through them, and it makes the specks of dust look like gold.

Mina breaths. It feels like she hasn't in a long, long time.   
  
It's a Thursday evening on a particularly chilly day, so she's wearing her favorite fluffy slippers. Her and Dahyun are watching Pride and Prejudice (because duh) and when Elizabeth kisses Mister Darcy Dahyun looks visibly uncomfortable.

"I don't know why you watch this stuff," Dahyun huffs.

"Cheesy movies are how I cope," Mina jokes, but Dahyun doesn't laugh, she's just staring at the screen where the characters are still kissing (practically eating each other's faces).

When Mina asks why she looks so uncomfortable, Dahyun avoids her gaze.

"I think I forgot," she says, embarrassed. "What it feels like to touch other people."

Mina's chest tightens - and then she chastises herself because the last thing Dahyun would want in the entire world is to be pitied, so she shifts in her seat so she's staring right at her ghostly companion. It's been a while since she's touched another person, but she doesn't think she could ever forget the feeling.

"Well," she starts. "It depends on who you're touching."

Dahyun does not look up at her. "What about you?"

Mina frowns. "Huh?"

"If I were touching you?" And then, Dahyun does look up, her eyes black and big and ashamed and hopeful. "What would you feel like?"

 _Oh_ , she thinks.

"Oh," she says.

Mina's quiet for a few seconds, taking the new information in. The words sink into her skin and make a home there in her flesh. It's not uncomfortable - Mina's cheeks tint pink and she thinks, _I wish you could touch me, too._

She clears her throat. "My skin is a bit bumpy. It's not very soft."

"I don't mind," Dahyun says, immediately.

"Okay," Mina nods, blushing harder. "And my fingers are a bit calloused, too..."

And because apparently Dahyun is now the bravest person in the room she asks, "What about your lips?"

Mina feels like the breath has been knocked out of her, but she can't _not_ say anything, so she says, "I would taste like vanilla."

She knows she's toying with destiny here, with a very strange thing, with the unknown. But sometimes it feels like Mina has a bird stuck between her teeth and it wants to fly away and she never lets it because she's scared it might fly off and never come back. She's tired of being a cage.

There is no dip in the couch where Dahyun is sitting, no feeling when the other tries to hold her hand. But when Mina lets herself daydream, she pictures this: Dahyun taking her hand, and placing it where her heart beats, and then kissing her lips, softly, and then the spot in her chest her hand just touched, gently; one, three, five times until her kisses match with the beat of Mina's heart, as if it were hers. Mina thinks, _can you mourn a fantasy?_

"I love you," Dahyun tells her.

Mina knows she doesn't mean like a friend. The string that ties them together, whatever it is, has always gone deeper than a friendship. Mina knows she means like the way Mr Darcy loves Elizabeth, like the way the moon loves the sun, like the way she loves Dahyun, too.

Mina wants to reach for her hand. There is no hand to hold.

She says, "I love you too."

Nothing changes after that, except maybe Mina feels a bit lighter some days. 

She's at the book shop flipping through a book about economy she doesn't care about in the slightest when Dahyun clears her throat a bit.

"Mina?" When she looks up at Dahyun, there's a strange sort of glow to her. She looks the most alive she's ever seen her, which is a lot considering she's very much dead. Still, it freaks her out a bit. 

"What?"

She makes a face. "It's time."

Mina puts the book down, then frowns.

"For what?"

Dahyun bites her lip.

Oh.

Mina likes to tell herself she's prepared, that she's done this countless of times, but she'd be lying. The others, they hadn't been with her for almost ten years and none of them had been Dahyun, nor had meant what Dahyun means to her.

Mina sets up the living room sofa so it's facing the window, away from the TV, makes some tea, and both her and Dahyun sit there and watch the sunset and the moon rise in silence.

She doesn't feel sad, she doesn't feel angry. She feels... numb. She's not sure if that's good or bad.

"Do you think I was your unfinished business?" Mina wonders, watching the moon slowly start hiding.

Dahyun half shrugs. "I don't really know."

"I've always thought you were haunting me because I was pretty," she jokes. Dahyun laughs, a ghostly sound.

"Well, that was part of it."

They don't say anything after that, not until Mina sighs, loudly.

"I've always hated this part," she confesses. "Saying goodbye. Even to the creepy ones, like the one with the patched eye."

Dahyun purses her lips, upset. "I don't want to call it a goodbye."

Then what is it? A see you later? Mina has no idea what'll happen when it's her turn to die, much less if there's truly anything after passing. She doesn't think Dahyun does, either. Mina bites her lip and doesn't say anything else to that for the sake of not arguing.

"Will you tell me how you died now?" 

"I think it was a car accident," Dahyun says, visibly thinking. "It's blurry. My life before meeting you, I mean, not just how I died. I don't remember much."

Mina thinks that she doesn't remember much before Dahyun either, and it's true. It's like their lives have become so intertwined it's almost faded into one story, a blurry of moments spent together, of almost touches and adventures and tenderness and jokes and. And. There's no point in looking back on it now, is it?

She thinks about living without her, and suddenly she's filled with visible dread, so Dahyun reaches to her and tries to run her hand across Mina's arm, but she feels nothing. She closes her eyes anyway, pretending like she can really feel her - imagines the way her calloused fingers (because she doesn't think of Dahyun as soft, honestly, she thinks it might even offend her) trace over her own skin, raising goosebumps. The ghost of a feeling.

"Hey," Dahyun says, making Mina open her eyes. "Don't go soft on me."

 _You make me soft_ , she wants to say, but thinks better of it. It sounds silly. Then she remembers she's talking to someone who died almost twenty-three years ago, and throws her head back and laughs. Dahyun makes a surprised noise from the back of her throat - and then she chuckles, endeared.

"Have you gone mad already?"

A lot of people would argue Mina already is. People certainly think she is; talking to empty spaces in a room.

"I'll just miss you," she says instead. And now she's said it. The words are out in the universe, in their full glory. Dahyun purses her lips. She was never one for feelings. But Mina can't stand not talking about it anymore; this feeling has been eating at her ever since she found a ghost on the top of her stairs, searching for something. "I'll miss you like you're a part of me."

Mina's never thought much about it, but she thinks it's fate. Wonders what would've happened if instead of a scared young girl she'd have gotten an old Navy seal veteran without his right leg that was searching for his wife or something, and the thought fills her with dread.

Dahyun is not good at feelings. She says, "I know."

She knows.

Mina nods, "Okay."

Then Dahyun bites her non-existent lip and says, "I wish I could..." and then trails off, not finishing whatever she was about to say.

There's a knot inside Mina's throat, and fuck, she hasn't felt like this in a long, long time. It's the type of anguish that settles in her bones, the kind that makes breathing hard, the kind that feels like she's drowning. Mina wants to kiss her. Mina wants to feel her - touch her; some kind of physical reassurance, but she has none. When Dahyun bends down to kiss her she feels nothing on her lips, just the cold chilled air that comes in unannounced from the window she forgot to close.

Dahyun sighs, disappointed, and steps away. Mina doesn't mind half as much. She can picture it. In her dreams Mina takes Dahyun's hand, and presses it lightly to her right cheek, and she kisses the inside of her palm delicately, as if she were planting flowers among her skin, and then captures her lips on hers, feathery kisses. She thinks Dahyun might taste like mint for some reason, and she gets teary-eyed.

There's a pause. The sunlight is coming in through the window, little rays of orange lights. It's time. How is it already time? Dahyun takes an unnecessarily sharp breath, stares at Mina one more time. _The last one,_ Mina reminds herself. _Make it count._

"Don't hate me for leaving."

Mina purses her lips, slightly annoyed, slightly falling apart. "I would never."

(She's lying. She's a pretty spiteful person, sometimes. She'll just be mad for a couple of days though.)

Dahyun giggles slightly, but it's a wet sound, like she's about to cry. Mina closes her eyes - she can't look at her like this, so vulnerable. She can't watch her disappear like she was never really here. But she thinks she might be smiling. Yeah, Mina tells herself Dahyun is smiling.

She thinks back on the thirteen-year-old at the top of her stairs, with blonde hair and a confused look on her face. She thinks about the whiteboard she threw away, about the shoes she got her that no longer fit, about the glass she shattered in despair, and the girl who had been there but not really all those times. Thinks, _I wouldn't trade my ghost for anything else._

She pictures this: a hand, with calloused fingers, and another one, with equally calloused fingers, holding onto each other for dear life as the other one disappears into the light, painfully slowly.

"Mina," she hears. Then she hears nothing else.

The sun comes in through the window, painting the room with light. Mina's eyes are cloudy and unfocused with unshed tears when she opens them, but when she glances at the stairs, she sees no ghost on them.


End file.
